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Adobe To Release Full PDF Specification to ISO
nickull writes "Adobe announced it will release the entire PDF specification (current version 1.7 ) to the International Standards Organization (ISO) via AIIM. PDF has reached a point in its maturity cycle where maintaining it in an open standards manner is the next logical step in evolution. Not only does this reinforce Adobe's commitment to open standards (see also my earlier blog on the release of flash runtime code to the Tamarin open source project at Sourceforge), but it demonstrates that open standards and open source strategies are really becoming a mainstream concept in the software industry.
So what does this really mean? Most people know that PDF is already a standard so why do this now? This event is very subtle yet very significant. PDF will go from being an open standard/specification and de facto standard to a full blown de jure standard. The difference will not affect implementers much given PDF has been a published open standard for years. There are some important distinctions however. First — others will have a clearly documented process for contributing to the future of the PDF specification. That process also clearly documents the path for others to contribute their own Intellectual property for consideration in future versions of the standard. Perhaps Adobe could have set up some open standards process within the company but this would be merely duplicating the open standards process, which we felt was the proper home for PDF. Second, it helps cement the full PDF specification as the umbrella specification for all the other PDF standards under the ISO umbrella such as PDF/A, PDF/X and PDF/E. The move also helps realize the dreams of a fully open web as the web evolves (what some are calling Web 2.0), built upon truly open standards, technologies and protocols."
http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/fileforma t/faq/#item-1-8:
pdftohtml
or
pdftk
The last one is more to let you edit a pdf, but they are all really useful when dealing with pdf file.
No, Tamarin is essentially getting Flash's action script engine, whichis EMCA Script 3.0 (I think), and this meaning that Firefox's javascript engine will be able to be replaced (overhauled) with the onen from Flash. The action script engine in flash is much faster and more robust than the one in Firefox currently.
je suis parce que j'aime
1) I think you mean "du jour"
2) <IndigoMantoya>I don't think "du jour" means what you think it means.</IndigoMantoya>
"du jour" simply means "of the day" ("soup du jour" => "soup of the day"). I really don't think you intended to claim that becoming the standard of the day is a good thing. I think saying, "PDF will transition from a de facto standard to an official one" would have been clearer, more succinct, and still gotten your intended point across.
Nathan
You can't account for fonts. PDF allows insertion of fonts. That is what makes it 100% compatible across platforms and rips.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
"PDF has reached a point in it's maturity cycle"
It's == It is. Its == possessive.
"a full blown du jure standard"
Either [soup] "du jour" or [practices] "de jure"?
Can't tell who's responsible for this, the linked page is Slashdotted.
Yes, a 100 MB application to read text seems a bit much. I use Foxit Reader. Just 2 MB, very fast.
Quite, which is why things like PDFCreator exist.
"When they open source Photoshop then we will know they support open source strategies.
Actually, Adobe did not open source anything with this move. They opened up the specification for the file format for PDF files. This is still a great move because other companies can now support PDF in both directions (read and write) but it is not open sourcing Acrobat. The equivalent move with regard to Photoshop would be to open up the file specification for the Photoshop work files (some sort of PNGs I believe).
Most word processors, like Microsoft Word, are created on the WYSIWYG principle. They are designed to show you on the screen how the document will look when it is printed. This is why the printer affects how the document is rendered to the screen.
Or, just disable the 952 plugins you don't use. Acrobat reader launchs plenty fast without loading them all.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
Currently there are three standards being specified. Which itself is bad. OpenDoc, a microsoft thingie called OpenXML and now the OpenPDF.
Currently there are two existing standards, OpenDocument (not OpenDoc which is something else) and PDF. These standards are for different purposes. The former is for word processing, and other office documents. The latter is for distributing finished products that are intended to be portable and not editable by those receiving them.
This article is about Adobe certifying their latest version of the PDF standard and announcing a formalized process for contributions from others to the development of the standard (rather than them doing most of the work and other companies contacting them to get things added).
In addition to these established standards, MS is introducing two new formats designed to "compete" with the established standards. The first is OpenXML, which is is arguably a standard but which takes care to make sure the traditional benefits of open standards are unusable. The second is XPS, built into Vista and designed to replace PDF. It is actually pretty much an OpenXML file plus a directory of images and binaries, wrapped in DRM and compressed as a zip file, with the extension XPS.
I wish PDF and OpenDoc will merge and come up with a unified standard.
I can see the argument for this, but one of the main reasons people use PDF is because they can distribute files via the Web, e-mail, IM, or whatever and users can read but not alter that content along the way. I'm not suer these two formats should be merged, or that it would bring a lot of benefit to anyone. For example, I make PDF files that use a lot of features I don't need or want in a word processing program. I can make PDF documents from my Web browser and often to in order to archive my transactions. I'm not sure I want those files to be editable in any way, and I know that putting them in ODF format as it currently exists would add considerable bloat.
They have no GUI so you have to hack it in. I found something like this years ago, and it's pretty obvious how to do it:
e r/
http://gemal.dk/blog/2003/11/18/slow_acrobat_read
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.